Shane Watson: Rise of the live-aparters

One in 20 couples is choosing to live separately — they have things the way they like them and they’re not about to disrupt their cosy set-up

A while ago, one of the top incentives for coupling up was making a home
together. For the first time in your life, you could choose your own
furniture, paint the walls any colour you fancied and it would be all yours
— as in belonging to the two of you. But that was before singleton culture
spawned a million fairy-lit girl’s flatlets, requiring visitors to remove
their shoes at the door, and as many bloke pads with coffin-sized speakers
and entire walls dedicated to HDTV. That was in the years before the sexes
discovered that it was possible to create their own ideal nests, without
considering anybody else.

And from there the only way was... sideways.

Now, new research tells us that one in 20 couples is choosing to live
separately — and of those, nearly one in five is over 35, and most likely to
resist cohabiting because they “have